Post-Mortem Boredom

I didn't want to do this.

Actually, let me rephrase that. I *really* didn't want to do this. Especially considering I'm about to enter into my HSC Trials, last thing I should be doing is getting bogged down in another drawn-out story.

But I did. Like a ******.

So this is set post-events in Outside the Cycle with a different focus and cast members. It's got an... interesting opening. Warning for the squeamish.

The Waning World: Act One

Accursed Reunion

Scene One
Nightsilver burned.

Flames leapt from the glittering branches to crackle ominously in the sky, the orange tongues a startling contrast to the deep blue of the night. Around, indistinct forms ran, desperately trying to extinguish the flames.
*
An underground cell, the only light coming from a smouldering torch, almost burnt out, set in an alcove high in the wall. Within the cell, one man sits, hunched over, yet his stance is still defiant.
*
Buckets of water are being passed around; sections of the blaze are extinguished, but the fire spreads to a different tree, and the cycle begins anew. Burnt leaves flutter to the ground, crumbling to ash. Smoke fills the air, and wracking coughs accompany the hissing of the flames.
*
Footsteps click in the silence from outside the cell, down the corridor. Light is visible from the tiny cracks at the edge of the heavy wooden door. The man's head turns up, his eyes desperately trying to pierce the weak light to see what might be occurring. Shapes of odd angles decorate the outside of the cell. What they are, nobody can tell.
*
Luna struck her fist against the door to the dungeon, casting it open. She moved her torch forward, peering into the gloom to assure herself that the prisoner was still there. The ruddy glow of the flames, so pale compared to the inferno above, exposed the hard wooden chair, with restraints for tying a person into it.

She moved over, first reigniting the torch in the alcove, before putting her own into a matching one on the opposite wall. The duality of the illumination dispelled the darkness and revealed her, clad not in her usual warrior's garb but instead in plain brown leather, purely functional in purpose, but unable to disguise her curved form underneath. She had tied her silvery-white hair back into a ponytail, and her blue eyes shone out from her perfectly formed face. Yet all her feminine characteristics were deeply contrasted by her actions. Roughly, she grabbed the prisoner by the arm and forced him into the chair, deftly securing him.

"Your name," she ordered, and was responded with a toothless grin.

"Jack Sovereign, m'lady," he said. "Come here to keep me company?"

"I am here to interrogate you," Luna snarled.

His grin widened. "I like being interrogated by pretty ladies. How about you untie me and we can come to an agreement?"

Not wasting her breath, Luna slapped him across the face hard enough to leave a red mark.

"Oh, I like them feisty," Jack smirked. Luna felt his eyes boring into her as she turned to look through the drawer behind her. She withdrew a wicked whip and inspected it, deciding to start easy on him despite his insolence.

"Who do you work for, and why would they ignite Nightsilver Wood?" she demanded, her voice loud and clear as she turned back. It was with some satisfaction that she saw a glimmer of fear in the disgusting man's eyes.

"Can't say," he winked. "They wouldn't like that."

Luna moved behind him and struck with the whip, leaving a rip in his tunic through which dark red fluid oozed. She struck twice more, each cut more violent than the last.

"You're a kinky one," Jack wheezed. "I didn't think you'd be into this."

She sniffed disdainfully. Men, she thought, returning to the draw and replacing the whip with a more brutal one, a variant of a cat of nine tails with barbs sewn into the tassels. This time, he wasn't so quick to make a snarky remark, and Luna hit him twice more, until his tunic was shredded and his back was crying blood, covering the white skin.

"I ask again. Who do you work for?"

"I can't tell you that," he replied, and she heard the pain in his voice. "Horrible things would happen to me that way."

Luna sighed, grabbing the man's wrist and forcing his hand palm-up towards her. She reached into her belt and drew out a cross between a pair of tweezers and a clamp. She rapped the implement on his knuckles, but the prisoner remained stubbornly silent. Wordlessly, she trapped his pinkie finger in the clamp and pressed down. There was no pleasure or other emotion in the act, and his cry of pain as his finger was pulverised to the first knuckle meant nothing to her.

"Speak." she said emotionlessly.

"I'll tell you nothing, you ***** - aah!" She repeated the process on his ring finger, leaving both digits a mess of shattered bones and torn muscle. Still silent, she drew a knife and moved it towards his arm, digging in below the skin and cutting upwards. Blood sprayed out, running from his arm down to hers and leaking onto the clothing she wore, already stained by prior victims. Jack's howls of agony were ignored and she slowly and methodically flayed his arm up to the shoulder, careful not to send him into shock. Finally, she pulled back, making sure to tug painfully on the red-raw flesh before standing up to look at the sobbing wreck who had been so wilfully defiant before.

"Need I continue?" she asked over the whimpering. Dispassionately, she studied the man - not broken yet. But nearly. A vicious smile creased her lips, and she knelt down before him, gazing into his eyes. The knife descended with excruciating slowness, and the prisoner glanced down, his eyes alighting on where it was heading. The orbs went wide with fear as the blade drew further down past his abdomen, its intention perfectly obvious. Luna affixed deadly focused eyes on him.

"Stop! I'll talk!" I'll talk!" he babbled, begging almost incoherently. "I don't know who hired us, he told us almost nothing, and I never heard a name, I swear it!"

"Describe him."

"Tall, hooded. His voice was wheezy, sounded like there was something wrong with his throat. Walked with a limp. And the smell! Rotten, decaying, horrible, horrible!"

Luna cursed, suspecting who it was. Jack still kept babbling, his words becoming more and more nonsensical, and it was clear he had nothing useful to say. "Oh, shut up," she muttered, slashing the blade across his throat. A spray of blood spattered her features, and she recoiled slightly.

She left the body where it was, wiping her skin and the implements clean with a towel before heading back towards the surface. If she were right - and she had a dread feeling that was the case - there was a lot more to be concerned about than a slight mess in the dungeons.
______________________________

She knew what she had to do, yet that did not make the task any easier to stomach. Luna clutched the moon shard tighter to her and leaned down over Nova as the cat padded carefully through the glade. Far behind them, the orange glow still lingered.

Her breath frosted in the air. "The fire is burning all," she called, only softly, for the whisper would be heard in the dark.

"Fire brings light," a male voice hissed from a mouth not designed for the human language. "Light brings pain!"

A massive blue claw lashed out from the treeline, grabbing Luna by the neck and hefting her off of Nova, who howled and swiped at the limb - too slowly. Luna was cast to the ground, and over her loomed a huge figure, easily three meters in height, all rippling muscle under taut blue-grey skin. A pair of batlike wings shrouded the sky behind him, but as she watched the darkness seemed to deepen, and ate the remaining light.

That, however, was what the moon shard was for. Luna held it above her head, and light poured from it, light that sent Balanar, the Night Stalker, cringing backwards. His inhuman three-part jaw opened to let out an shrill shriek, and his small red eyes blazed with fury.

"You have a lot of nerve coming here, Moon Rider!" he snarled, gnashing his jaws together. Carefully, Luna rose to her feet and stepped away from him. Nova growled and joined her.

"This pertains to us both," she grunted back, massaging her throat and the long scratch Balanar's talon had left in it. "If I am right, and I dread that to be so, much more is at stake than our rivalry!"

The Night Stalker advanced until he stood over Luna, forcing her to look up, up, up at him. His breath, stinking of rotted meat, washed over her and it was only through force of will that she did not back away, show weakness. He leaned down. "Speak," he ordered, voice spitting razors.

She swallowed to calm her nerves. "We caught one of the arsonists and interrogated him to find out his master. What he said was nothing specific, but…" She repeated the description she had been given. As she did, Balanar's wings shrunk back and his tail swung in what Luna swore was anxiety.

"Remind you of anyone?" she finished. Silence followed.

"Undying," Balanar finally hissed.

"I hope not," Luna said, "but I yet fear the worst. If the Almighty Dirge sings again, if the Dead God sends his legion across…" She lapsed into silence.

The hatred was visible in Night Stalker's eyes as he surveyed her. "I will act on this," he promised. "Now be gone, or die."

"Act?" Luna snapped. "What exactly do you plan to do? Everyone must work together here, or I would have not informed you."

Balanar snarled at her wordlessly and faded into darkness. Still fuming, Luna remounted Nova and returned to the burning woods.